Too often time is equated to attention, when really they’re nothing alike.
Attention is dynamic while time is static. Attention can be directed, time cannot. While both time and attention can run out, each happens for different reasons.

If you can separate the two, you’ll find that you have much less attention than you have time. If you don’t have time for it, you definitely don’t have the attention.

Own your attention, and you will own your time.

After 25 months of building a workout habit, there are a few things I’ve noticed.

The first is that maintaining my weight is much, much easier now. Even if I completely go off my regular eating over a holiday like Thanksgiving, it takes about 2-3 days to return to my normal weight afterwards.

The second is that we often tend to focus on the wrong habit. I often joke that I do not have a workout habit but in fact, I have a going to the gym habit. Some days are great workouts, others are not, but if I walk in the door of the gym, I’ve continued my habit.

The third is that eventually, we hit a turning point where our identity becomes wrapped up in the habit. There’s a point where it’s hard to imagine yourself not doing that thing. It becomes so deeply ingrained in who you are it’s not even a habit anymore. It’s just something you do.

The goal of any new pursuit that requires a lifetime of maintenance should be to reach that point—realistically, results are nice because they help you stay motivated—but none of them actually matter so much as staying long enough to change who you are.

We spend so much of our lives skimming across the surface of the water that we forget that the best things are often below us.

Slow down, take a breath, and dive.

The most important thing I’ve learned about reaching goals in life is just how unimportant the actual goal is.

It represents something we want to achieve, something we don’t have, or a milestone we’d like to hit. But it says nothing about the underlying lifestyle changes that would make that goal achievable. And once we hit it? What then?

Sure, there are goals that are one time things. A sprint to get a project done, graduate from university, finals week, things like that. But for things like health, eating well, mastering a craft, the moment we stop practicing the things that got us there, we begin to lose them.

The process of getting there is 99% of the point—the process is how we live our lives day in and day out. The process is the goal.

So why wait until we accomplish what we set out to do to enjoy it? To celebrate it? A life that only celebrates the achievement of a goal is a life with little celebration.

After the recent explosive growth in cryptocurrency, I can’t help but reflect back on my experience mining altcoins back in 2013. Bitcoin had become somewhat well known and was floating in the $500-$1,200 range and many alternate coins (altcoins for short) started popping up all over the place.

The concept seemed interesting, so I built a few computers that were designed to “mine” some of those currencies started learning as much as I could.

I sold much of the currency that I acquired through mining to cashflow the operation. It ended up being several bitcoins worth of currency at the time, but was sold off mostly in the $600-700 range in 2013. At a certain point, the mining I was doing was no longer profitable, as my computers used more energy than new technology that was constantly being developed.

So we turned off the machines and on one of my computers kept some bitcoin and dogecoin (one of the currencies we mined at the time).

Four years later, we see bitcoin rocketing from $1,300/BTC to over $17,000. I can’t help but think about what I might have done differently knowing bitcoin’s potential for growth. Realistically, there are three steps to any hugely profitable investment:

1 / Have A Great Idea or Think of Something Interesting

To start out, you have to have the idea that others might not have yet. A piece of information, some intel, or perhaps just a thought while comes to you while showering that makes you think getting into something might be a good idea.

Once you have the idea, you can research it a bit, find out as much as possible and then move on to the next step.

2 / Execute On Great Idea

This is a critical stage of the process, where you actually have to execute the great idea. 99.9% of people fail here when it comes to investing—they never take action on an interesting idea they had. Perhaps they don’t have the funds to invest or fear losing money on such a thing.

In this step, you have to actually buy the stock/coin, make the bet, or figure out a way to leverage a potential outcome over a period of time. Doing this, moves you on to the final step.

3 / Have Patience

This step is the difference between making 10% on a decent trade or investment and making 2,500%—having patience enough to let your idea fully play out and see where it could take you.

A big part of this is being financially stable enough to not need the money you may make in the short term and to just keep on holding. Part of the reason I kept my own bitcoin for so long was that it was inaccessible—on a computer in the basement, disconnected, for almost four years.

When bitcoin started rising rapidly, I figured I should at least figure out how to control the money I had stored.

If the idea was great, and you executed on it, and you have patience enough to wait for it to potentially come true, you will be a successful investor.

If you only have two of these things, it’s likely that you won’t get very far at all.

While attending World Domination Summit today, Scott Harrison, the ceo and founder of charity: water, said this quote. Originally stated by Avot de Rabbi Natan, it struck me as an important message across the board.

In his context, he was talking about doing charity work that works on a problem that may never be fully eradicated. If he’s able to bring water to every person on earth, there will always be another problem to solve after that.

“Once everyone has fresh drinking water, it’s not like I’m going to go get a job at a bank.” – Scott Harrison

I think too often we focus on the next stage of life or imagining ourselves after the work is done. Seeing ourselves as having been changed or somehow different once we’ve reached the end of the work. Our life’s work really has no end, at least until we die. That’s the only true end I know.

While we’ll complete various things over our lifetimes, really the growth can continue onward forever.

In addition, I think there is a general fear around attempting to tackle a problem with no end. We want to strive for completion, for impact, and to finish the work that we do in a substantial way.

The truth is, the most impactful work likely has no end. According to Scott, 662 million people in the world don’t have access to clean drinking water. Over the last 10 years, his organization has helped about 7 million people gain access to fresh water through community wells and other strategies.

So in 10 years, his organization has raised over a quarter of a billion dollars and helped 1/100th of the people in need across the globe. It seems like such a small dent, but the impact is significant for so many people.

This situation reminds me of the story of the young boy walking down the beach, digging up starfish as he went. There were thousands of them, stranded all over the beach but he’d pick up one at a time and throw them back into the water.

Eventually, someone noticed what the boy was doing, looked over, and said, “Don’t you realize that you can’t help all of these starfish? You’re not really making much difference, there are thousands of them stranded here!” and as the boy throws yet another starfish into the ocean he responds, “It made a difference to that one.”

This is why we need people to step up and do work that potentially has no end, as intimidating as it can be. We can make a difference in the lives of individuals across the globe by doing important work.

I’m feeling particularly inspired, seeing the link between The Hope Effect and Charity:Water and the opportunity  to create change through those organizations. As Break the Twitch grows, I’d like to explore my own giving opportunities to see what causes I want to work on bettering the world with.

I would greatly regret living my life without seizing the opportunity to make a meaningful impact when I’ve been given so much in this life already.